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Slack S-1

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Re: Slack S-1

#151

Post by noxToken »

xfitm3 wrote: post #114
noxToken wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Slack any different than any other instant messaging application? Hangouts, Jabber, Discord, Rocket Chat, and even WebEx or GoToMeeting - you can disable notifications, completely ignore, or even sign out of all of these applications. I'm not saying that Slack are the good guys, but if your managers are forcing you to have all notifications on at all times and using @channel for every message, then it really i…

Slack is not flexible or customizable - when basic features like muting someone are requested you're told that you are using Slack wrong. The notion of a one size fits all solution is flawed.

Well now I feel stupid. We use Slack at work, but it's not our official communication channel. I've never needed to block or mute individuals. I didn't know that it couldn't be done.

Re: Slack S-1

#152

Post by tqkxzugoaupvwqr »

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #121
moreira wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm just not aware how things work in companies of Slack's size, but... what do you think $4M/mo is spent on, for what essentially amounts to a chat app? I realise there a lot of extras in Slack (attachments cost S3 storage, video calls take bandwidth, webhooks take some processing), but as of January 2019, they had 10M daily active users. $50M/365 gives us $137K per day. $137K per day just to serve 10M activ…

Much of this goes into geo redundancy too. These 10M people are not in one place. So, you need redundant highly availably deployments in many regions. This does add lots of infrastructure duplication but is also super speedy for end users. This adds to the cost big time! For example, I was working with a gaming company and they had 10+ regions around the world, all using this type of setup, just to keep latency to an…

Hm, I may lack the proper knowledge. Why do I need redundant infrastructure? Why can’t I have instances in the cheapest region (300 ms delay is not going to kill anyone in a chat app), and if an instance fails, bring up a new instance, and if the region fails, bring up instances in another region. I don’t see why there should be redundant, idle instances running. Maybe duplicate the database / make it highly available.

I also don’t understand how duplicated infrastructure makes it super speedy for end users when they are from around the world. Yes, they could connect to regional instances, but then the regional instances must synchronize with the other regional instances on the other side of the planet, which gains nothing.

Re: Slack S-1

#153

Post by [deleted] »

dcosson wrote: post #49
will_brown wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any other industry where a company can go public having lost $500,000,000 over the last 3 years? I get it their “market share” is increasing every year and the loses are staying the same...and even that is not the full picture of a path to profit. But if the company could turn a profit, then why not do it privately, show that and then go public? My guess like Uber and Lyft...they can’t turn a profit, and for…

Don’t understand this take at all. The public is free to just not buy the stock if they don’t want. You think the problem is that investors are leaving too much potential for growth on the table when companies IPO? They should wait even longer and keep more of that growth private?

[deleted]

Re: Slack S-1

#154

Post by BurningFrog »

CSMastermind wrote: post #8
amrrs wrote: post #2

Lyft, Uber, Zoom, Beyond Meat and now, Slack Is there any benefit of Public at this point of time? or Just a trend to grab as much as Wallet share from the average investor?

The market is going to crash and everyone wants to cash out before it does.

What specifically will make the market crash?

Re: Slack S-1

#155

Post by cdolan »

zedpm wrote: post #135
tw04 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious if it's remotely sustainable. We started on Slack ~3 years ago. We're now moving (albeit slowly) to Teams. 18 months from now Slack will be gone entirely. I can't believe we're the only ones. And unlike Dropbox vs. Ondrive, Slack isn't markedly better in any area than Teams from my testing.

Oh no, turn back while you still can. My team is in full revolt due to a company-wide migration from Slack to Teams. Teams is worse in almost every way. We're seeing lots of missing functionality, bizarre UI bugs, random crashes, extremely slow sync, you name it. Teams is in no way a viable replacement for Slack unless your use case is one or two plaintext messages per day.

I don’t know your use case but my team of 20 moved from Slack to Teams and has been very very happy with it.

Video chats and screen sharing are better (Screenhero is all that was around on Slack and it stunk). Video recordings save right to OneDrive for important meetings...

Oh and if you use Office 365 it’s a no brainer, everything is integrated!

Re: Slack S-1

#156

Post by maxxxxx »

zedpm wrote: post #135
tw04 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious if it's remotely sustainable. We started on Slack ~3 years ago. We're now moving (albeit slowly) to Teams. 18 months from now Slack will be gone entirely. I can't believe we're the only ones. And unlike Dropbox vs. Ondrive, Slack isn't markedly better in any area than Teams from my testing.

Oh no, turn back while you still can. My team is in full revolt due to a company-wide migration from Slack to Teams. Teams is worse in almost every way. We're seeing lots of missing functionality, bizarre UI bugs, random crashes, extremely slow sync, you name it. Teams is in no way a viable replacement for Slack unless your use case is one or two plaintext messages per day.

I would agree. Teams is pretty half baked. It sort of works but the main reason for using it as that it’s cheap if you have office 365 already.

Re: Slack S-1

#157

Post by KeenFox »

zedpm wrote: post #135
tw04 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious if it's remotely sustainable. We started on Slack ~3 years ago. We're now moving (albeit slowly) to Teams. 18 months from now Slack will be gone entirely. I can't believe we're the only ones. And unlike Dropbox vs. Ondrive, Slack isn't markedly better in any area than Teams from my testing.

Oh no, turn back while you still can. My team is in full revolt due to a company-wide migration from Slack to Teams. Teams is worse in almost every way. We're seeing lots of missing functionality, bizarre UI bugs, random crashes, extremely slow sync, you name it. Teams is in no way a viable replacement for Slack unless your use case is one or two plaintext messages per day.

It's a gamble: stay with Slack and potentially be forced into an "Our Incredible Journey" migration in the future, or migrate now and shamble along until 40+ year old and profitable enterprise juggernaut Microsoft figures out how to make their product work right. Neither option is great.

Re: Slack S-1

#158

Post by moreira »

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #121
moreira wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm just not aware how things work in companies of Slack's size, but... what do you think $4M/mo is spent on, for what essentially amounts to a chat app? I realise there a lot of extras in Slack (attachments cost S3 storage, video calls take bandwidth, webhooks take some processing), but as of January 2019, they had 10M daily active users. $50M/365 gives us $137K per day. $137K per day just to serve 10M activ…

Much of this goes into geo redundancy too. These 10M people are not in one place. So, you need redundant highly availably deployments in many regions. This does add lots of infrastructure duplication but is also super speedy for end users. This adds to the cost big time! For example, I was working with a gaming company and they had 10+ regions around the world, all using this type of setup, just to keep latency to an…

There's a big difference, though; they're not all connected. Each team is its own separate entity. A team with 10 people might pay Slack $100/mo, and all be in the UK. Those people and that Slack team's database doesn't need to interact with anyone else in the system. There should be no big scaling constraints here, unlike your gaming company, where everyone needs to be connected from anywhere in the world, at the lowest possible latency.

Re: Slack S-1

#159

Post by gist »

cupofjoakim wrote: post #41
maxxxxx wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still mind boggling that all these unicorns haven’t found a way to make money even after being in business for years and having a mature product. It’s a strange world.

Well, these guys do have a good way to make money. Enterprise contracts are worth their weight in gold. As you could see from the quote, their revenue has increased more than their losses - which mean that they are on their way to become profitable. Arguably they could be now, if they didn't invest in growth as much.

> which mean that they are on their way to become profitable.

Never will be sure of the exact numbers but a great deal of the sales is no doubt driven by startups and cash they are spending (do they still call this runway?). When that stops what happens?

Re: Slack S-1

#160

Post by calabin »

nik736 wrote: post #143
tw04 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious if it's remotely sustainable. We started on Slack ~3 years ago. We're now moving (albeit slowly) to Teams. 18 months from now Slack will be gone entirely. I can't believe we're the only ones. And unlike Dropbox vs. Ondrive, Slack isn't markedly better in any area than Teams from my testing.

Teams is super buggy and I hated using it. We are now back at Slack (and actually happy paying customers).

Same - we used Teams for 2-3 weeks before switching back. The syncing was horrendous, the mobile apps were terrible, and a litany of other things I've forgotten.
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